


Never Let Me Go

by Rens_Knight



Series: In the Burning of the Light [17]
Category: Star Wars Legends: The Old Republic
Genre: Gen
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2017-11-27
Updated: 2017-11-27
Packaged: 2019-02-09 17:50:47
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: Major Character Death
Chapters: 1
Words: 3,888
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/12893484
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Rens_Knight/pseuds/Rens_Knight
Summary: This is it--the final battle of the Outlander, Darth Imperius, Tarssus Kallig, against the Sith Emperor--and this time the battlefield is inside Lord Kallig's mind as the Eternal Emperor Valkorion, once known as Vitiate and Tenebrae, tries to seize permanent control of the Light Sith's body and cast it into the Darkness forever.But Tarssus Kallig isn't alone--he has allies among the living and the dead, and between them, they may yet have what it takes to surround the Emperor on all sides and destroy him...





	Never Let Me Go

**Author's Note:**

> **Author's Note:** This story takes place at the end of SWTOR's Knights of the Eternal Throne expansion. I estimate this story takes place seven years after the events of the Dread War--five years of which Tarssus spent frozen in carbonite on Zakuul...and two years thereafter, sharing headspace with the Sith Emperor. After all of that, I think he's very much entitled to the reaction he has in this story.

_Tarssus Kallig--Darth Imperius--the Outlander--he had fulfilled his mission. Despite his reservations, he had slain Vaylin and seized the Eternal Throne._  
  
The Throne had tasted his flesh with tongues of lightning. It had found him worthy, restraining its fire short of killing him. The ships of the Eternal Fleet ravaging Dromund Kaas, Coruscant, and Zakuul had fallen silent. It should have heralded the beginning of the peace. Then the spirit of Valkorion had awakened and risen up from within Kallig to tear it all down--starting with the very spirit of Tarssus Kallig himself.  
  
The Outlander had openly challenged Valkorion at first--but it hadn't made a difference. Valkorion would have struck anyway. He had seized his body, forced it back onto the Eternal Throne into a terrible, catatonic stillness. All of this--all of the struggles of the Alliance, of the Sith Empire, of the Galactic Republic...for nothing.  
  
The dreadful stillness had lasted for an anguished age. Yet something _rippled beneath the oppressive weight of that ancient dark spirit. Something that still remembered the boundary of life and death as a thing to face, to understand...but not to fear. A self that still_ had _a self beyond the all-consuming drive to perpetuate its temporal power forever. Something that told the observers that there was still hope. That there was reason to fight, to buy him time..._  
  
  
  
It had finally happened. The thing I had feared most since the moment I had first become a Lord of the Sith. Darth Zash had tried and failed with me. She had half-succeeded with Khem Val, but I had banished her. Then Vitiate--Valkorion--Tenebrae...he himself, the Sith Emperor, the Eternal Emperor... _he_ had come for me and sealed me in a blasted wasteland, anathema within my own body.  
  
Yet I had found refuge within the very image of the one I hated. The Emperor had always conditioned his subjects to surrender their wills to him. To be nothing but vessels, his soulless progeny. And above all, never, _ever_ to probe the depths of the very same mysteries that he sought to twist to his own immortality. He had never had a go at a trained Force-walker; I _knew_ it somehow. Moreover, he had never faced off against a spirit that held within it both the innate nature of the living, and that of those who had gone beyond. For whom existing in both realms at once truly was as natural as breathing. He had shaped himself to this. I...I simply _was_. And the difference was that for me, that was enough.  
  
He had forced his outer image and his audible voice upon my soul. But that was all. I had worn the flesh of the spirits I had bound in my Force-walking days, when they forced me down into their deepest nightmares. Kalatosh Zavros...Horak-mul...Darth Andru...Lord Ergast...and the Voss who had healed me--none of them had known then, that they prepared me for this. To hide away the knowledge somewhere that I was still _me_. To sequester some part of myself beyond the touch of any other mind, that could evoke my Force-walking training, my life's memories, and that flame within me...the very one that warmed my soul yet the very same that the Emperor had believed made me weak.  
  
I had arisen then, looked to the horizon--and there I had beheld it: the citadel he had fashioned within my own mind: an homage to the ultimate debasement, the ultimate servitude, an altar built of frozen selves upon which sat the image of his Eternal Throne. And the Force-shackled image of everything that _I_ had ever sought to be. An altar: a place of sacrifice. My soul was to be his latest sacrifice to the god of his own vilest self. And yet he had placed _himself_ upon that very same pedestal, the same one upon which the sacrificial knife always threatened to fall.  
  
I had guided his form in its ascent, until there I stood, face to face with myself. And there I found the holocron--not the same one that Tenebrae had fashioned into his father's prison, of course, but I knew it for what it was: the symbol of agency. Of hope. I had reached out and seized it, and it sent its flare up into the darkened skies of my consciousness. This was my challenge--my damnation of everything that he had ever believed of me. Light--weakness. Light--cowardice. Light... _strength_.  
  
I took to _my_ feet this time, standing before the image of the Throne. I was ready to fight. Read to _end_ this wretched monster, that had even feasted upon the essence of his own child. He had thought that would cow me into terrified submission. No--oh, no. That only stoked the flames within me all the further...enough that without the Force-walker's bonds of blood-agreement, even with only my word as my guarantee that I would grant him not just freedom but the final satisfaction of justice, I called upon the tormented spirit of Lord Dramath, the one who had begotten Tenebrae.  
  
Perhaps I should have been more interested in redemption, even then. Perhaps in that I exposed a true weakness. Or perhaps the terrible calm of that moment heralded the deepest need, the necessity for something else. Something that very much was _not_ mercy. Something even more than the heart's fleeting scream for revenge. No. This was to be the _reckoning_ for Tenebrae, once and for all.  
  
Within Lord Dramath lay only hatred for his misbegotten son. Yet after the millennia of torment it was hard to know if this was entirely the expression of the Darkness Lord Dramath and his vilest spawn had spent their lives in veneration of. Or if there flickered therein some light of recognition that for something far beyond an ages-old feud gone fratricidal, _this had to be done_. I could not force any of it back: my hatred, my disgust at this vile slavery by which Tenebrae had shaped the deepest depths of his soul. The thing he had done to his father. To the peoples of Nathema and Ziost. To every Voice he had stolen over the generations. To his Children--the ones he had abused to the death, and to the one whose Light had been her salvation. I would not hold Lord Dramath back. I would not deny him his revenge, for through _this_ revenge, there would come _justice_.  
  
_And it was long past time_.  
  
I could have sworn that the moment I released him, Lord Dramath had favored me with the faintest hint of a bow of gratitude--a nobleman's acknowledgment that someone had finally been true to their word with him: that instead of letting Beniko interrogate him to her heart's content, I'd seen to the holocron's safety and granted him as peaceful a sleep as I could, until I could deliver the moment of satisfaction of which he'd only dreamed.  
  
Even so, I would never know what lay within Lord Dramath's soul at the end, for he slipped away from my senses once he pierced Tenebrae's armor. His tale was lost to the millennia for me. But not that of Vaylin. I knew what Tenebrae had done to _her_. She had always been pursued by the Darkness. But her father--her own father--had handed it the keys to its victory, all in the name of his ultimate domination. He had seized her freedom, taken from her the power to make her own choices as to which path she would follow. Only the Dark. And only for _him_. He had broken her mind--her very _will_. The essence of Vaylin within Tenebrae was a slave of the Darkness. And this crime--even against her, _especially_ against her... _I would not abide_.  
  
And so I made one final choice for her--the same one I had made for Dramath: _freedom_.  
  
It was then, in that same moment, that the one vestige of that blighted family, the one who had chosen his freedom in life, however belated, finally came for me...Arcann. I shall never know if correlation truly signaled causation. I have never asked. And I never will. But perhaps that was the moment when the child of the Eternal Empire truly _knew_ that he could fully trust the one who had erased his father from the world of the living. That I, the Outlander, had done all of this not for power, not for glory, not for vengeance...but for freedom. Even for his. I cannot say, for just as was the Light that spilled forth from me in my antechamber on Dromund Kaas and into the four spirits whom I had bound, this truth is greater than me.  
  
But whatever it was, I beheld the results: Arcann made the transit through the holocron that offered the single gateway into the soul of the Emperor, and made his declaration: "I will not let you face him alone."  
  
Maybe it was the bridge between the realms that Arcann had created by touching the holocron. Maybe it was the amassing of the forces of the Light. Whatever it was--that was when I heard _another_ voice...half-mechanized, yes, but familiar. Comforting. And utterly absent from me ever since the Emperor had frozen me away and stolen five years of my life, then launched his gambit for my freedom.  
  
_It was Lord Aloysius_ , come for his descendant once more.  
  
His voice spoke from my other side--firm, defiant, righteous. And overcome with love even as he evoked another of the Emperor's names in his wrath. " _Nor will I, Vitiate--you will_ never _take my son!_ "  
  
"Touching," Tenebrae cooed. "Vaylin! Strike down the brother who betrayed you--and the Outlander who stole your life away...and this armored fool who dares to call the Outlander _his son!_ "  
  
Vaylin had wavered. The thirst to pay me back for the blood I'd spilt was strong. Yet for the first--and last time in her existence--Vaylin listened to Arcann. To the truth of me and what I stood for. To the truth of _him_ , and what he had chosen to become. And she made a choice, one that her father had not made for her, for perhaps the first, and definitely that last time in her temporal existence.  
  
We stood against him together--Arcann, Vaylin, Lord Aloysius, and me...and even this, it seemed, would not be enough. Tenebrae swatted the three of them away, bore down with the full might of his power against me alone. Arcann fell silent--terror. Vaylin too--in despair.  
  
But not Lord Aloysius. " _NO, Tarssus!_ " he thundered with all his might. " _Don't let him do this--DO NOT LET HIM...!_ "  
  
And that was when I understood. That all of this--this prison, this horror--it all still lay within _my_ mind. Tenebrae had _not_ destroyed my spirit. He had _not_ broken my will, not as long as I was still here, still fighting--and moreover...all of this around me, save for the ghostly person of the intruder himself, of Vaylin, the avatar of Arcann, and the fiery spirit of Lord Aloysius...it did not simply surround me. It _was_ me. _And I did not have to let him win_.  
  
He had taken Vaylin's essence into herself. Therefore it followed that he had taken _that_ into himself as well. And ultimately, all that surrounded me was an extension of my consciousness, my logic. So I snarled the code phrase--the same one he had programmed into his daughter: " _Kneel before the Dragon of Zakuul!_ "  
  
And it reached out and ensnared him just the same as it had when I'd wielded it against Vaylin, firmly enough that one more joined him: Senya, the one whose love he'd abused to create that one trophy he'd never had as Sith--a family. And that, he made it abundantly clear, was all they had _ever_ been to him.  
  
And then there was me--nothing but a lone Sith in his eyes, some pathetic remnant of his first castoff toys, the people he had spent a thousand years, sculpting into his own vile image...and bloated with power, he said, and why? Because to him, I was nothing more than a tool he had forged to be a body worthy of the Eternal Throne.  
  
I shook my head. "You know nothing of the forge, Tenebrae. To make anything truly worth wielding, you have to know every aspect of it, inside and out. You presumed that you finally understood what I am when you injected yourself into my mind. At least now you actually acknowledge me as _Sith_ instead of just 'heretic.' But if you truly think for even a second that you have any more claim on what it is to be Sith--that I am _anything_ like you at all--you are _sorely_ mistaken. And that is why you have _failed_. I am _taking_ my freedom, Tenebrae. It's over!"  
  
And with that, I struck what would have simply been one of many in a succession of final blows dealt to the Immortal Emperor--except that Tenebrae had been conquered on his own field at last.  
  
A burst of unadulterated energy ripped like a supernova through my entire being as finally--finally the thousand year plague upon the Sith surrendered to the inevitability of death.  
  
As the light faded, it melted away the blasted, corrupted landscape, leaving in its place the great still vastness of the Dromund Fels desert beneath a pristine, clear night sky awash with stars. The sajjen-scrubs were aflush in a green even the depths of the night could not disguise, and the monsoon-roses were in full bloom. I recognized this territory at once: the far wildnerness where I had commended my father's spirit unto the stars. Senya and Arcann were gone from my sight. I stood alone now in this hallowed place, save for one.  
  
"Lord Aloysius..."  
  
It was all over, and he was still here. I could see him...I could sense him...then I remembered where I was. That I saw him now not as an ethereal being made out of moonlight, but a figure made of iron and silver, cloaked in red and white, a being as solid as the desert stone.  
  
I charged forward, clasping the figure of my ancestor in my arms, heedless of his armor, heedless of what anyone else could possibly think...heedless of anything save for the abiding _reality_ of Lord Aloysius' presence.  
  
The spirit tensed for a second. A jolt of fear shot through me right then--not the mortal terror that had seized me when I'd discovered myself in the Emperor's form, but something else. Something that pierced my heart as none of Tenebrae's creations ever managed. Had I offended Lord Aloysius, disgusted him with my show of impulsiveness--  
  
No. As he enfolded me into his arms, all trepidation melted away as if it had never been. I felt the metal of his mask come into contact with the silver of my diadem—the original form, and the form I had forged it to, truly existing together in one realm and one time. " _Blood of my blood--Tarssus, my boy...you've done it. All who came before you failed because they only struck down the bodies he wore. None of them broke the power he'd stored up in his spirit. No one will ever have to fear him again, least of all you._ "  
  
Suddenly my entire body convulsed with racking sobs. Five years in the carbonite--two years awake with that beast coiled tightly within my own mind and my galaxy torn asunder...finally over. Lord Aloysius pulled me tighter. I closed my eyes. And I could actually feel _warmth_ on my back, through his hide gloves. "Lord Aloysius...y-you...you came back...you came back..."  
  
" _I truly wish it hadn't been so long, my son._ " Lord Aloysius' solemn whisper had the same mechanical burr his words always had--but it seemed so much fuller here, where he and I fully and truly existed on the same plane. Though he had long ago forgotten the sound of his unaltered voice, the catch in his throat needed no distillation. I heard it clearly enough. " _Vitiate was always there--he even stalked you in your dreams. I dared not let him sense that I had followed you to Zakuul. He was powerless to imprison me as he did to his father--what you did the day you set the four bound spirits...and me...free on Dromund Kaas saw to that. But he could have killed you right then, or destroyed your sense of the spirits beyond, if he had realized. I_ wanted _to help much sooner than this. I could see what he was doing to you, the pain he had caused. It was only when you used the holocron--the only thing that Vitiate made the mistake of allowing a direct connection to his true ethereal form--that I finally had the conduit to come to your aid._ "  
  
_So_ that's _how it worked_ , mused the part of me that never stopped in its pursuit of knowledge. Even amidst the tears, the years of sorrow being washed away, I still could not stop my longing for answers. And that too was its own tiny bit of healing.  
  
"Thank you," I mumbled between ragged breaths, the words so wholly inadequate to the upwelling from within me.  
  
We drew apart then--at least somewhat--at Lord Aloysius' urging, though we still stood with each clasping the other's arms. " _It was my pleasure_ ," said my ancestor. " _And now you must go back into their world. Your companions--they're waiting for you._ "  
  
I couldn't tear my eyes away from the dark orbs of Lord Aloysius' mask. Everything within me ached--even with the dreadful weight of the Emperor's presence lifted away, my soul, my essence, my very being were scarred and weary. The world promised its own awful burden. So much sorrow--so much destruction. But here--I had finally touched something of the existence greater than reality. And that part of me, which had already twice been drawn into the realms beyond, longed to be carried free. To find my home where I ultimately belonged. "My lord...my--my Grandfather..." And still the tears flowed. "Please don't leave me. I don't want to go."  
  
Lord Aloysius did not rebuke me. I could feel the aching within his soul, of a parent who cannot erase his child's pain. " _Oh, Tarssus...I know. I know how much it hurts, my son, how hard it is to let go once you've come so close. I know it feels right now like you'll_ never _return. To feel this so keenly, the fear of letting go and bringing an end to this moment. Time has changed for me, my boy, but I remember what it was like. We all have felt that pain, Tarssus. It destroyed Vitiate. It could have destroyed me. But I know you've understood the truth for a long time already: that yes, it grieves you to know that nothing lasts forever...until you remember that you already_ have _forever. Remember that, Tarssus...wherever you go, however long it takes, or however soon: you already have forever._ "  
  
"I'm sorry...I didn't mean to be so--"  
  
Lord Aloysius shook his helmeted head. " _Don't be. That's in your nature right now; I understand. You'll assume a new nature in time. But I know you're strong enough for the road you have to travel before you get there. You have a wife, and a brother. They may not be on Zakuul right now, but they are waiting for you._ "  
  
I straightened as best I could. My tears had not completely stopped--I don't know how they could, with the realization that was settling over me. But they had slowed. "I'll do my best. I promise."  
  
" _And that is all I can ask_ ," my dear ancestor confirmed with one final squeeze of my arms before he let go, and the illusory finality ran through me with a shiver where the warmth of his hands went absent. Or nearly so, as he added one final command. " _Now go, Tarssus, with my love._ "  
  
I drew in a deep breath, searching within me for the thread that bound the reality around me back to the one from which I came. It was time. The dazzling light flared around me and through me once more--  
  
  
  
_As the light swelled up and around them, the observers awoke to themselves once more in the hall of the Eternal Throne. They had awakened, but Imperius--the Outlander--Kallig--he still had not. Had they succeeded in destroying Valkorion, but paid for their victory at the cost of the Outlander's life?_  
  
The stillness at first would not relent. But then the tears began to flow from the catatonic young man's closed eyes.  
  
And that was the moment they truly knew _that the presence of Valkorion--Vitiate--Tenebrae...whatever the_ thing _that had walked among them had truly been...was well and truly purged this time. The final thread that represented his connection to the worlds of the mortal was no more. Whatever_ this _was, this was no longer Valkorion. This was the Outlander, coming back into himself._  
  
An overwhelming sense of the numinous settled over Senya and Arcann. Though the questions crowded their minds, though they wondered what it might be that brought this man such suffering and such absolution intertwined, both of them knew at once that they would never ask. And especially not Arcann. The Outlander had placed a faith in him that he had not deserved, that he would find his way back. And Arcann had returned that trust even in the face of his progenitor and ultimate enemy, and helped the Outlander to find his _way back. That, he felt to the deepest part of his soul, would have to be enough._  
  
At last, the Lord of the Sith opened his eyes, which still shone cerulean and bright with the tears that had washed them clean. No one said a word, not until everyone in the room heard the same voice ringing out upon the air, faintly distorted, but undeniably real.  
  
"I am still here, my son. _"_  
  
_Though some might have described the mechanical quality of the voice as cold, to Arcann it registered as anything but. He had heard words such as this spoken devoid of meaning. This was_ _not_ _Valkorion. Whatever_ this _apparition was...it meant it._  
  
_The faintest of smiles worked its way across Tarssus Kallig's pale and weary countenance, as his eyes began to focus once more on the world before him. His fingers moved as if he thought at first to wipe his tears--but instead they stretched slowly to his forehead to touch the center of the silver diadem that he had always worn, even in the carbonite. Arcann did not understand the meaning of the gesture...but then he didn't have to, to understand that whatever this was, this was sacred._  
  
_And then Arcann heard the echo of the ethereal voice again, speaking the three words that the being who fathered him never once spoke._

**Author's Note:**

>  **Soundtrack:** ["Adagio for Strings"](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=50WIs0Rbm9Q) by Samuel Barber as conducted by Leonard Bernstein, ["Never Let Me Go"](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=EpkDQZB_EZQ) by Ursine Vulpine
> 
>  
> 
>  **Canon note:** Yes, I know that Lord Aloysius Kallig doesn't show up in game if you play the role of the Outlander as a Sith Inquisitor. But I felt it ought to happen...especially with the way I've built up the interaction between the living and the dead Kallig before.


End file.
